Ludivina Padilla

I started my career as an assistant to a quality assurance manager in the distribution industry, and what really drove me was that I like helping people and trying to do more for people to help them out. I saw a lot of things that I would have liked to change or to do better, and that encouraged me to learn and to get into the human resources area. Over 12 years with the same company, I worked my way up from QA assistant to QA manager, then assistant to the safety manager, assistant to the distribution manager, and finally became the sole HR contact in charge of about 120 employees at the distribution center. Now, I'm the branch manager at Staff Force Personnel, where I've been for 4 months. I manage a team of 3 recruiters, 1 admin, and one salesman. My day-to-day involves reporting to my clients, building relationships with my clients, visiting my clients to make sure everything's running smoothly with our employees at each location, recruiting, and interviewing. The branch I manage is what our company calls a monster branch because it's one of the ones with more business due to the location in Laredo, Texas, a border town with a lot of logistics business and high demand for employees all the time, especially in the logistics distribution area. My most notable professional achievement is the relationship that I build, both with my employees and my clients. I'm all about building a relationship with everyone because I think that's what gets you to know who you're working with, how you're working with them, and so that you understand where to send employees, not to just send anyone to a company. It's very important to me to build a relationship with everyone and to be able to help them, both the client and the employees.